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Friday, August 23, 2013

Spa drainage solution a worry for Vettel but not for Charlie

Image from James Allen's twitter feed

All the Formula 1 drivers and their respective engineers were in for a surprise when they went out for their track walks on thursday to inspect the track around Spa-Francorchamps. They noticed diagonal grooves that have been cut into the asphalt for the first twelve grid slots.

When asked, Charlie Whiting told correspondent Michael Schmidt, “In this area we needed better drainage for when it rains. We have good experience with this method from Brazil.

Championship leader Sebastian Vettel told Auto Motor und Sport, “There is probably a disadvantage for the start, because you will have less tyre on the track,” said the German. But he was later heard saying that ”We don’t know the difference because we never had starts on that kind of surface. I don’t expect it to be a big difference.”

“We actually had a meeting just before the press conference and we were discussing about it,” said Jean-Eric Vergne. “I think we’ll probably bring it up during the drivers’ briefing or team manager’s briefing, try and have a practice start, see if there’s a difference or not.”

Romain Grosjean said: “We noticed it while I was doing the track walk but I haven’t talked with the start guy yet. It looks different when you walk.”

“The first to eleventh grid position are more or less the same so there is no disadvantage from there, it will be more around twelfth position where there could be problems. I think from the first few rows should be same for everyone.”The F1 race director Charlie Whiting however said that he is not concerned that the upper half of the grid will face grip problems on Sunday afternoon. it might just make the racing more interesting as it covers the top twelve.